A Giant Black Dog Found a Dying Mafia Boss in the Snow — What Happened Next Was Incredible

Chapter 6

The days that followed carried a new rhythm. Softer. And also more dangerous.

The hostility between them had melted away. What came to take its place was something neither of them knew how to name.

The physical therapy sessions were no longer a battlefield. Her hands on his legs had become familiar. Sometimes, while she was bending and stretching his muscles, they would both look up at the same time. Their eyes would meet. A moment would stretch until the air felt tight.

Roman hated himself for it. Each time she bent close, he found himself noticing things he shouldn’t notice. The way a lock of brown hair slipped down against her cheek. The calluses on her hard-working hands. The faint scent of stove smoke and snow clinging to her coat.

In the world he had come from, affection was an opening for enemies. A lever people used for threats. He had watched too many powerful men fall because they let their hearts command their minds.

A part of him screamed that he had to rebuild the wall. Had to push her away before it was too late.

But Mara was no less torn.

She still carried Caleb’s image in her heart. She still felt as if she were doing something wrong each time she caught her own heartbeat quickening in the presence of this strange man. A man she knew was hiding something enormous about who he truly was.

She told herself this feeling was only because two lonely people were trapped beneath the same roof in the middle of winter. That it would fade once he grew stronger and left.

She clung to that reassurance like a lifeline.

—

One evening, she knelt to bandage a scrape on his arm. The room held nothing but the glow of the stove fire. Bear slept in the corner.

Her hand paused on his wrist. Right where he had hurt her with his grip in those first days.

They both realized it at the same time.

Instead of pulling away, she lifted her eyes to him. Her face was only a hand’s breadth from his.

Roman felt his breath stop.

In those brown eyes, he saw the same uncertainty tearing through him. The same fear. The same longing, held tightly back.

For one moment that seemed to last forever, the distance between them shrank until it was almost gone. He could feel the warmth of her skin. Both of them hung suspended on the edge of something that, once crossed, could never be undone.

Then Roman turned his face away.

Not because he didn’t want it. But because he wanted it too much. Because the truth that he was lying to her about who he really was pressed down on his chest like a stone. He knew exactly what he was. Knew how much blood had stained these hands. And he had no right to pull a decent woman into the darkness where he belonged.

Mara drew back too. Her cheeks flushed. She murmured that it was late. Turned away to lower the fire.

But her hand trembled as she did it.

And the small room still rang with the sweet, aching tension of something that had nearly happened. Something both of them knew wouldn’t be easy to forget.